Huawei’s 6.68mm Ascend P1 S gets March launch in China

The last time we saw Huawei's Ascend P1 S, it was hanging out at CES, looking down on all the "new" smartphones that dared to show up running Gingerbread. Now the Chinese manufacturer has laid down its plans for the super-slim phone's release, at least on their native soil. Tech.Sina reports that the 6.68mm phone will be heading to mainland China in late March. As Huawei extends its market share across the globe, you can expect this phone to show up in Europe not long after that, and perhaps on US carriers eventually.

The Ascend P1 S crams some very respectable hardware into that tiny frame. A 4.3inch screen, 1.5Ghz dual-core OMAP 4460 processor and 8MP rear camera make it the equal of most of the high-end smartphones on the market today, though the AMOLED screen is "just" 960x540. A 1,800mAh battery is an impressive accomplishment considering the size. While the pre-production models we saw at CES were rocking a barely functional version of Ice Cream Sandwich, Huawei assures its customers that the retail version of the phone will launch with the latest version of Android in a complete state. Like a surprising number of ICS phones, the Ascend P1 S comes with capacitive buttons.

Huawei is making big waves in the international market, and they intend to keep doing so. Along with announcements from HTC and Samsung, we're expecting a new line of high-end phones from Huawei under the "Diamond" label to appear at Mobile World Congress. With any luck, carrier partnerships for the Ascend line will also be announced.